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Thursday, December 30, 2010

I finally learned to operate some of my camera's more expert settings! I have always had some troubles handling the depth of view when shooting my projects, especially larger groups. It really pissed me off. Well, now this pesky little problem seems to be fixed, hooyah!

Now that those rear ranks won't blur away, I thought to take a shot from my another everlasting project, Chaos Warriors.

This project has been long under work, maybe lost forever, who knows... I was collecting this army just before Games Workshop decided to split Mortals and Immortals (daemons). Maybe that's one of the reasons this project, Father Nurgle's Ruddy Idolators, is now chilled and just lurking in the closet, waiting for my retirement days...

That group of eight Chaos Warriors in rotting red armors won The Best Group title in RopeCon 2010's Miniature Painting Competition.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

I must admit, I'm a bit of a nostalgia junkie. I have four Commodore 64's with couple of floppy drives and a punch of TAC-2's. Me and couple of my good friends enjoy playing retro games in our every-now-and-then arranged Retro Evenings, which also include some beer to go with the old classics, of course. I happen to like, surprisingly, 80's and early 90's heavy metal. Those old thrash bands really had that something. Too bad I was just a kid when that kind of music was "the pop".

I'm also a huge fan of 80's Games Workshop stuff, especially the classic Citadel miniatures range (just visit The Stuff of the Legends and you'll know what I'm talking about) and the (real) Old World, the one that is introduced properly in the 1st edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and, in generally, in the 3rd edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Those two first Realm of Chaos books, Slaves to Darkness and The Lost And The Damned, are just something you simply need to read to fully understand what's the real potential of the Warhammer universe. Even the smell of those old tomes gives me damn good vibes to start painting.

Speaking of the grim and unforgiving world of Warhammer, place where death visits often and widely. I happened to stumble in the Internet and found out that the upcoming The Witcher 2 is going to have very interesting feature - Insane difficulty. In Insane mode you're not able to load your saved games after you die. Now that, if something, is like straight from the good old WFRP, where only couple of critical hits could sever your limbs off and end your adventure in that bloody spot. Yeah, sounds like a harsh way to play the game but the enjoyment of surviving the events is plenty in my opinion.

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Back to business... Usually my projects are heavily inspired by the 80's and early 90's 'Eavy Metal team's outputs. I wade the old White Dwarfs, which are perfect source of inspiration for my kind of projects.

Collecting and painting an entire playable forces has always fascinated me. Seeing fully painted armies in show case standard is something outrageously beautiful, something to envy. I have many old school armies under work, dwarfs, orcs, chaos warriors and wood elves. Well, my current ambitious project, a small warband of Emperor's Children, is a bit of a side quest...

Once again I was dragged by the irresistible need to collect an army. I was planning to start playing Warhammer 40.000 and I was thinking of which army I'd like to play. Space Marines have always fascinated me, but I wanted to play the evil side. Therefor I chose the Chaos Space Marines.

Then it was a time to choose which God of Chaos would it be. I know that you can take worshipers of different Gods and mix them to suit your playing style, but I wanted to make just one chapter warband. I've read about Emperor's Children and their background really inspired me, so I decided to choose them. I dug some resent White Dwarfs and ended up browsing the one that included the new Chaos Space Marines plastics and their new Codex. The same WD had also an article about the new Apocalypse and some pictures of the studio armies. Christian Byrne's huge Chaos Space Marines army caught my eye, especially his Slaanesh posse. I decided to emulate his colour scheme for my army as it looked so bad ass.

Here's the first three of the Children that I've managed to mod and paint in past six (seven or eight?) months...

I still have two of these on the painting stage and punch of more in bits. I'm planning to have one squad of 5-10 Children armed with bolters, plasma pistol (Champion, in the middle) and one with the bigger plasma gun. Second squad of 5 Children is going to consist of bolt pistols and close combat weapons (chainsaw swords and power swords). These two squads will have nicely freehanded Rhinos as their personal transport, just to give them enough rapid deployment if needed.

Of course Slaanesh warband is nothing without couple of Noise Marines. I think I'm going to have 5 of those gigsters. Daemon Prince is a must too, so I thought to have the Daemon Prince of Slaanesh, Azazel, to be leading my band of brothers. Azazel's pose, feather wings and daemonic claw make him just perfect for my plans.

I'm not sure how much that all is in gaming points, enough to start playing maybe? So that's it for now. Maybe I'll finish my next couple of Children within 3-4 months ;) In any case, have a merry Christmas and mind blowing New Year!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

I have always wanted to be an artist of some sort. When about a year ago, i started to sculpt my own miniatures from scratch. I then felt, that it was the turning point for me. I immediately realized that it was the "Thing" for me and my art. It was the perfect medium to turn my visions into life!

First i sculpted couple of miniatures in a Warhammer setting, but i quickly stopped to think, that i didn't wanted to just copy the endless heroes with swords standing over their fallen enemies...no! i wanted to create something more unique, something that could actualy be called............. an Artistic Vision!!!!!

Then one day,me and izeColt had this very good conversation about Pop Culture in the miniature design scene. It was then, when i realized that was it! That was perfect thing to study in my next projectCombining Pop Culture with miniatures, offers great opportunity to display your mini's to a people who dont have any knowledge about the background of these characters that we are usually modelling and painting. Inspired by the conversation i hurried to start a new project!

I then chose Lady Gaga as a starting point for my next project. Lady Gaga has the most bizarre look and i personally respect her artistic vision, so she was a perfect pick for this project. I wanted to mix Lady Gaga look with qothic Warhammer look. So firstly i thought to make sister of battle with "Gaga" look, but then found this wonderfull character class from The Inquisitor Scetchbook by John Blanche.

My new character was to be a Space Pirato. A warrior that roams the qalaxies of Warhammer 40k robbing and pillaging!

I started by searching pictures of Gaga and then deciding that what features i wanted to bring out.Then i started to sketch the character.

When sketching was done i started to sculpt the model.I began to sculpt the model about four(!) times before i finally managed to get it right.I used Super Sculpey Firm for the body subsequent detailing will be made with duro.

Thursday, December 09, 2010

My head still eachs from last weekend! izeColt Called me and invited me to have a drink with him. So we had few beers and talked about future projects...and them some more beer & less talk and then some little more =)

So when i woke up in the morning, i felt like Hell for some reason ;) Anyway, as i lingered in the borderline of life and death my imagination was running wildly. In that delirium i saw this following scene inside my head:

"Aaah! This is pointless", "we're never gonna find IT in this damned snow storm!!!"

"Stupid! Can't you remember what Captain told us? It is not our job to find IT, We are here so that IT could find US"

"Well yeah! But I have come to doubt that we have been wandering in this freakin' labyrinth for hours now and soon it is going to be dark and all!"

"IT is called "The wandering beast" after all. Maybe he's not at home?"

"Be quiet yer both!", yelled the Captain. The Captain was big man and renowned for his skills with the sword. He had been leading his mercenary party for years now. This time they were on a mission to bring down a beast, beast that had been causing troubles on the rural areas of the Northern Empire.

Only this time, finding the catch had been a little bit more difficult than usual. The tracks had led them to this labyrinth of razor sharp rock pillars. They had been searching the labyrith for whole day now, but all they had found was a haunting sound of a wind sighing trough the rock pillars.

His men were tired and bored "We have hunted down scums like this before havent we? And we have always found treasures as well right?", asked the captain, in attempt to raise the morale of his men. "RIGHTRIGHT!!", answered the rest of the mercenary party. "Despite, I have sent Crowell ahead already, he is a good scout. He will probably bring us some information soon enou..!"

"Looking for this?", asked crooked voice that echoed in the walls of the rocky labyrinth. As if appeared from nowhere, a large creature suddenly stood in the front of them. The Creature was tall, muscular and lizard-like. It had pale skin and long tail with spiky, club-like business end. But the most signifigant feature was a large singular eye that stood in the the middle of the creatures brows. The eye was large and it seemed to radiate coldness around it, at least the mercenaries felt the cold shriwelling down their spines, as they answered the creatures penetrating gaze.

"We are looking for you!", answered the captain. "We are here to kill you, so we could bring your one ugly eye to the Mayor of the Razor Peak City".

"You have been raiding the food supply caravans for the whole winter", "and this has been a harsh winter!"

"The people of the Razor Peak City don't want to starve to death this winter!"

"So we came here to put the end to your illegall business, my fiendish friend!"

The creature answered with howling laughter and threw away the head, the one he had severed earlier.